Criminalisation Of Consensual Adolescent Relationships Under The POCSO Act: Towards A Narrowly Tailored Close-In-Age Exemption
Lavanya, B.A. LL.B., Trinity Institute of Professional Studies, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University
ABSTRACT
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 ("POCSO Act") was enacted to protect children from sexual assault, sexual harassment, and pornography through a zero-tolerance framework that treats consent as legally irrelevant below the age of eighteen. Empirical studies suggest that a substantial proportion of prosecutions registered under the Act do not involve exploitation, but consensual relationships between adolescents brought to the attention of the police by disapproving families rather than by any injury to the child. This paper argues that the resulting divergence in judicial outcomes is not, as often characterised, a story of doctrinal evolution toward reform — it is a symptom of a statute that gives courts no tool to distinguish exploitation from consensual conduct, forcing each bench to a different improvised answer. That divergence is itself the argument for legislative, rather than judicial, correction. Building on statutory analysis, judicial trends, the Law Commission of India's 283rd Report, and comparative close-in-age exemptions, this paper argues for a narrowly tailored "Romeo and Juliet" clause — while directly confronting the strongest objections to such a reform, including the risk that a poorly drafted exemption could be used to shield coerced or power-imbalanced relationships rather than protect genuinely voluntary ones.
Keywords: POCSO Act, adolescent relationships, consent, close-in-age exemption, Romeo and Juliet clause, Law Commission Report No. 283, legal reform.
